


Permission

by punkfaery



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Dark, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-25
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-04-07 22:09:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14090733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punkfaery/pseuds/punkfaery
Summary: "Let me in," said the vampire outside the window.





	Permission

Would it have been worthwhile,  
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,  
To have squeezed the universe into a ball  
To roll it towards some overwhelming question,  
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,  
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—  
If one, settling a pillow by her head  
               Should say: “That is not what I meant at all;  
               That is not it, at all.”

T. S. Eliot, _The Love-Song of J. Alfred Prufrock_

* * *

 “Let me in,” said the vampire outside the window.

Thor, who had been on the cusp of sleep, opened his eyes. The candlelight turned the shadows into monstrous things, stretched out as long and thin as paintings on the walls of a cave. But the bedclothes were warm, and the window was locked, and nothing was getting in or out without his say-so. He locked his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling, counting the seconds.

“I know you’re there,” the vampire said. It sounded amused. “Aren’t you going to come out and say hello? It’s been simply _ages.”_

That was the mistake most people made: they heard a voice, a familiar voice, and their curiosity compelled them to go and look – just to check, they’d tell themselves, just to make _quite_ sure – and of course once you’d looked you were done for. Your heart saw whatever it wanted to see. What mother could resist embracing her daughter one last time? What young man had the steel to turn away something that looked and sounded so much like his lover? “I’m not stupid, you know,” said Thor, and he uncrossed his arms and sat up, shivering in the cool air.

The vampire laughed softly. “Oh? Is that so?”

Thor did not reply. Instead, he bent to open the bottom drawer of his bedside table. It was almost empty, save for a small glass bottle of clear liquid sealed tightly with a cork. He worked the cork out of the bottle’s neck, careful not to spill any of the contents, and went over to the window. It was latched at the top, although the sash did not pull down far enough for anyone to climb in or out.

“What are you doing now?” the vampire said.

Thor parted the curtains and slid the top pane open as carefully as he could, concealing the bottle from sight. Then he tilted it. The water beaded and collected on the glass rim.

 _“Ah – ”_ said the vampire, sharp and pained, and then it hissed. There was a rustling, and the rustling fell still. The drops had evidently found their mark.

Thor waited a little longer, to see if anything else would happen, but it seemed that his visitor had gone. He closed the curtains again, returned to bed, and slept until dawn.

* * *

 “Let me in,” said the vampire outside the window.

Then it coughed suddenly, as if clearing its throat. The sound was thin and unpleasant.  “I won’t hurt you,” it added, wheedling. “I promise.”

Thor snorted, but there was no real amusement in it. “Give me one good reason why I should believe you.” The curtains were open, he realised suddenly; just a crack, but it was enough to be dangerous. He stood and went over to close them. Through the gap he could see a hunched figure with its back to him, little more than a shadow in the dim light.

“You think I’d lie to you?” the vampire said, in injured tones, as he drew near. “I’m hurt.”

“I’ll give you credit,” Thor said. “You really do sound like him.”

There was a brief pause, as if the vampire couldn’t decide whether or not to be insulted. Then it said, “Very well. How about this: I’m injured, it’s about five minutes till morning, and if you don’t invite me inside then you’ll have a terrible mess to clean up come sunrise. Oh, and I imagine you’ve got a veritable tank of holy water stashed away somewhere in there.” It paused, as if for thought, and added, “I can go on, if you like.”

“Don’t bother,” said Thor. “I have a crucifix as well.”

“Good for you,” said the vampire, not without some sarcasm.

A sudden sharp breeze, and the branches of the yew tree beat wildly against the window. When it died down again, the vampire straightened from its hunched position and pulled a loose twig from its collar. Thor saw the ugly burn mark there, saw the vampire’s fingers lingering on it as if on the face of a lover, and half-smiled to himself. He had done that. He had made that mark. Not so defenceless, after all.

After the first few attacks, after people had begun to migrate to the cities and the more densely populated areas, they’d told him he wouldn’t survive out here alone. His mother had taken him aside and told him privately that he didn’t need to stay. She’d kept her voice level, as always, but Thor heard the desperation under it, and knew what she was really trying to say. She and Odin had already lost one child; they didn’t need to lose two.

 _I’ll be fine,_ Thor had assured her. _I know how to protect myself._

She’d touched his shoulder with startling gentleness and said, _Sometimes it is hardest to protect ourselves from those we love._

Which was, of course, ridiculous. All right, so his strengths might not lie _chiefly_ in his mind, but he was no fool. And he was damned if he was going to let his family home go to rot simply because a few vampires had decided his town was ripe for the picking.

“What did you say the time was?” the vampire asked, shaking him out of his reverie. Its head was still turned away, face hidden. He could see nothing of it but that sweep of dark hair, sheened with blue like a crow’s wing, and one thin hand braced on the window for balance.

“I didn’t,” said Thor. He glanced up to check the clock on his bedroom wall. “It’s a quarter past seven, by my watch.”

“Which means the sun is due to rise in about three minutes,” the vampire told him, pointedly. “Last chance.”

It was unsettling, how well it managed the imitation. Vampires often impersonated the voices and mannerisms of loved ones; they were known for it. Often the glamour was so cunningly woven that you didn’t even realise what they were until you were bleeding out on the floor, a hungry leech-like mouth clamped around your carotid artery. Thor recalled one story about a miner who had come home to find his long-lost daughter waiting for him outside the front door, and overjoyed at the sight of her, had granted her permission to cross the threshold. As she turned to walk inside, the miner saw that although she looked ordinary from the front, her back was completely rotten. There was nothing there but ribs and a dark empty gape, like the hollow in a dead tree.

As a child, that story had given Thor nightmares. Now, although he still sometimes dreamed of it, the image no longer held that same thrill of terror. Instead, he’d wake and see it all in his mind’s eye with a mixture of guilt and longing. The details of the fantasy varied, but the formula remained essentially the same. He’d go to the nearest city for supplies, and the trip would take just a little bit too long; as the sun set he’d get back to the house to find his brother waiting outside for him, hair damp from the rain, and the two of them would go inside together hand in hand. They’d make dinner, and sit by the fire, and little by little the small house would fill up with laughter and with love.

Perhaps it wouldn’t matter if his brother was only half there, only half a person. After all, what were hollows for if not to be filled?

“Really? Three minutes?” he said. “And what will happen if you stay out past sunrise?”

“I don’t know,” said the vampire, and Thor heard the undercurrent of _And I don’t care to find out._ “I can’t imagine it will be pleasant.”

“I guess you’d better find somewhere else to hide, then,” said Thor, and he pulled the curtains shut.

The vampire said from the other side of the glass, “You’re heartless.” It sounded reproachful. 

"You would know," said Thor. 

The vampire did not reply, and after that there was no noise in that small house but the moaning of the wind.

* * *

“Let me in,” said the vampire outside the window.

“No,” said Thor. He was writing a letter to his father, and when the voice came he did not jump and he did not look up. The curtains were pulled tightly across the rail, casting a reddish shadow across the floor.

A pause, then: “Why not?”

Thor stopped writing and stared down at the page. An ink blot had spread across one word, like a wet, many-legged insect. He worked his mouth for a moment or two, licked his lips.

“Your kind,” he said, “killed somebody once. Somebody I loved.”

“It’s possible.” The voice was dry. “We kill a lot of people.”

“He was my brother,” Thor said.

The clock on the wall ticked on thirty seconds. Thor stared at the paper without seeing it.

A boy, small and waiflike with green eyes and a tumble of dark hair. A boy who had listened avidly to the stories Thor made up about shooting stars, and how they were really gods who had been cast out of the sky and had fallen to earth in disgrace. A boy he’d held close while thunderstorms shook the foundations of the house, even when they should have been too old for such a thing. A lover of books and of mischief. His father’s despair, his mother’s delight. A boy who had grown up into a man, tall and sharp-faced, with eyes like chips of sea-glass. A man who Thor had loved, in all the ways that mattered.

It was almost morning.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

He spoke quietly enough that the vampire could have chosen to ignore the question. At first Thor thought it would. Then he heard the reply, in a voice even softer than his own.

He’d known all along, if he was honest with himself.

* * *

“Let me in,” whispered the vampire outside the window.

It had been two nights since its last visit.

Its voice was almost gone now; little more than a wisp, a husk, a seed. How long could a vampire go without feeding? Thor said nothing, and waited. It would ask something else now, he knew; his brother always had to have the last word, would likely have gone to his grave with a retort still lingering on his lips. But the silence that followed was long and dark and unbroken. He glanced towards the clock and saw that the time was just gone midnight.

Gathering the quilt around his shoulders, Thor went to the window, pushing the curtains to one side. A dark shadow was hunched on one side of the pane. He didn’t need candlelight to know what it was. How badly was it hurt? Would it die? _Could_ it die?

“I give you permission,” he said, praying that his voice wouldn’t shake.

There was no response.

“Can you hear me?” he said, louder this time. “You can come in. I gave you permission.  It’s all right.”

His hands found the lower window sash, the one that opened all the way. Splinters broke off in his fingers as he tugged it up, slowly, stiffly, and leaned out into the gloaming. “I give you permission!” he shouted out, regardless of whoever or whatever might hear him. A bird of some kind took flight at the sound and flew chittering up to the rooftop. Thor scanned the shadowy garden below, eyes stinging in the chill, searching for something, _someone –_

“I died, you know,” observed a conversational voice from behind him.

Slowly, Thor turned around.

(Just a boy, in the end. A boy who had never really grown out of his fear of thunderstorms and told his brother that shooting stars were really just flaming meteorites falling to earth and scoffed when Thor asked if he wanted a kiss goodnight. A boy who had gone out one day to get supplies for his family and had never come back again.

“Promise me you’ll be careful,” Thor had said to him. “You know what’ll happen if you stay out past sundown.”

“Oh, _please._ I’m always careful,” Loki replied flippantly, winding a scarf around his neck. It had been one of his more obvious lies.)

“It’s a pity it didn’t stick,” he said. The night breeze felt cold on his neck.

“Oh, come now. You don’t mean that.” Loki stretched, languidly. The bedsheets were rumpled from where Thor had been lying on them just minutes ago. He wondered if they still felt warm.

“Out,” he said. The word was a dart of irritation, but it bounced off Loki as harmlessly as a ball of screwed-up paper. “Get out.”

A yawn, a cat-like ring of teeth. “You’d turn away your own dear _brother?”_

“You aren’t my brother,” Thor said, wishing he could believe it.

The sash window abruptly banged shut, and they both flinched. Rain had begun to fall – tiny, needle-sharp pinpricks that bounced and rattled on the glass.

“Looks like a storm’s coming,” remarked the vampire who was not Thor’s brother, and shivered almost unconsciously.

Thor hesitated. Then he walked over, and sat down beside him, the bed creaking gently beneath their combined weight. He smelt of earth, sodden and lonely. Thor curled his fingers around the crucifix under his pillow. “Why did you come here?” he said, and his voice sounded hollow.

“I died,” Loki said again. He raised one hand and Thor tensed, but he only pulled up the hem of his shirt to display the ugly wound that bisected his stomach. It was raised and pale, already scarred over, a welding job done poorly. It looked as if it had been there for years. “A year ago I lay on the ground and I bled into the dirt like an animal and _you weren’t there.”_ His hand shook; he let it fall, clenching it in the bedclothes until the knuckles turned white. “An oak tree shielded me from the morning sunlight, but even that wasn’t enough. Have you ever felt anything like that? Soil in your lungs, blood welling in your mouth? The sun beating down on you, burning your skin? Can you imagine what that’s like?”

“I never stopped looking for you,” Thor said.

Loki’s mouth twisted, as if he’d tasted something bitter. _“They_ did.”

“Loki – ”

“They went away. They _left.”_

“So did everyone,” said Thor. “Mother and Father couldn’t bear to stay here, not after you disappeared. I think it was just too much for them.” Loki said nothing this time, simply looked at him with one dark eyebrow raised. “Living here,” Thor said, “in this place, with no one around for miles, and those monsters roaming around everywhere after dark – ”

He stopped.

“Monsters,” Loki said. His voice was flat.

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Am I a monster, Thor?”

Thor looked at him.

Loki was very pale, paler than he’d ever been in life, and the veins in his wrist and neck were bruise-blue. No pulse beat at his throat; when he’d sat at the window his breath had not fogged the glass as Thor’s did. Although he still moved gracefully, there was something odd – almost jerky – about his motions, as if someone had hold of his strings and was manipulating him to walk this way, or to sit here, or to stand there. And there was something of the grave-smell about him, too. Not rotten, exactly; merely damp and earthy, like a forest cooling after the rain. “Not to me,” he said, and meant it. “Never to me.”

Loki laughed. “Brave words.”

“When,” said Thor, and paused, trying to think how to put it delicately. “When did you last…”

“Feed?” said Loki, and raised an eyebrow.

Thor nodded, swallowing. The word sounded oddly obscene.

“I’m always hungry, these days,” said Loki. “Most of the time it’s bearable. I don’t know how much longer I can last like this, though. It’s been months. Honestly, at this stage it’s probably kindest to just drive a stake through me and have done with it.”

He said it lightly, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth, and Thor felt a stirring of sick unease. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not? It’s the truth.”

“That’s not going to happen,” Thor said, sharply. “I won’t lose you a second time. Not if I can help it.”

Loki gave him a look that seemed to honestly question his sanity. It was comfortingly familiar. “Thor, I don’t think you quite understand. Either I die, or someone else gets turned. That’s how this _works.”_

“I understand just fine,” Thor said.

Loki stilled. “Do you?” he said, expression suddenly, unnervingly blank.

Thor nodded.

They sat side by side on the bed, not touching. The rain outside was falling harder than ever, and the roof of the house was rattling as if it was about to come down. Presently Loki’s hand crept out, and their fingers twined together tightly – one hand warm and alive, the other ice cold.

After a time Thor said, “So. You really did die, then?”

“Yes,” said Loki. “I really did.”

“But now you’re here.”

“Yes. I’m here.”

Thunder sounded outside.

“Lie down with me,” said Loki.

Thor did. His skin felt colder than rain. He wrapped his arms around his brother, wanting to warm him, and closed his eyes. He thought he could hear something, but maybe it was just the wind or the neighbours or the radio he never turned off before bed. (Never mind that he didn’t have neighbours.) It was telling him to be careful, but he buried his face in Loki’s neck and ignored it, trying to find his brother’s old familiar smell beneath the smell of moss and earth. There was something there, but it was faint, too faint. He mouthed at the skin, trying to get closer to it. 

“Thor,” Loki said.

His voice was taut, strained. If Thor didn’t know better he might have thought he was nervous. “What is it?” he said, and put a hand up to touch his brother’s face. His thumb found Loki’s mouth and traced over his lips, which felt dry and chapped. No breath. Was this what it felt like to dig your own grave?

“Things aren’t the same,” Loki said. Thor felt the vibrations of it against his fingers. _“I’m_ not the same. I won’t ever be, not now.”

“I’ve already told you that I don’t care,” Thor said, “unless _you_ do, in which case – ”

“It doesn’t bother me.”

“You’re sure?”

Loki shrugged tensely. In the cage of Thor’s arms he was whipcord-thin, torso as ribbed as the bark of a willow tree. “Yes. It’s just strange, that’s all.”

“What is?”

“All of this. Talking to you. Being with you. I’d started to feel like none of it was real. Like I’d made it all up, or – or dreamed it somehow.” Loki hesitated, then: “Did you _really_ think I wasn’t your brother?”

“I don’t know,” Thor said. “I suppose I wanted you to still be alive. To still be you.”

“And now?”

Thor ran his hands through Loki’s hair, pushing it away from his forehead. It felt damp and soft. Loki stared up at him, looking more open (more vulnerable, although the word did not quite seem to fit) than Thor could remember him looking in years. It was as if a curtain had been drawn aside, exposing his wire-taut heart.

“I don’t know,” Thor said again. “I think I’m just glad you’re here.”

And then he kissed Loki in the way he’d wanted to for all those long, empty days and nights that he’d spent alone in this house, waiting for his brother to come back to him, waiting for a miracle. Did this count as a miracle? It was a resurrection, of sorts. Lazarus, young and beautiful, still wrapped in the clothes they’d buried him in. What more could anyone hope for, he wondered wildly as Loki seized a handful of his shirt and dragged him closer, than to love a person so much that you could bring them back from the dead? At some point Loki had begun to cry, without making any noise at all, and Thor kissed away the tears, hands mapping out the familiar shapes of cheek and nose and lips. He wondered if his warmth felt strange. If it burned. “It’s all right,” he said, scarcely knowing what it was that he was saying. “It’s all right. I have you.”

“Please,” Loki said.

“Loki – I missed you, I missed you _so much,_ please don’t go – ”

“I won’t,” Loki said, “I swear,” and Thor wanted, more than anything, to believe him.

The knot in his gut was unspooling. He felt pain as Loki’s fingers clenched and unclenched, nails digging into his upper arms. “Be still,” Thor told him, and he pulled the blankets over both of them to keep the heat in. This was a different kind of hunger, he thought; but perhaps with the same result, after all. He tangled his hands in Loki’s hair, pulling his head back so he could get at that place where his brother’s jaw met his ear.

When he sucked at it Loki made a noise much like the one he had made that first night, when Thor had burned him. It sounded like pain. “Are you all right?” Thor said, pulling back momentarily. He was on his elbows now, body braced over Loki’s. It took everything he had not to pin him to the mattress there and then, to conquer, to devour.

“More than,” Loki said, with a choked little laugh. Their eyes met, Loki’s unnaturally bright and only slightly red-rimmed. They looked like the kind of pools one could easily drown in. Thor inhaled and held it, and for a moment neither of them breathed at all.

“I can hear your heart beating,” said Loki, suddenly. He was worrying at his lower lip with teeth that were just a bit too white, and a bit too sharp. “Has it always been that loud?”

Thor let the breath go and laughed. “Really? I can’t hear anything.”

Loki’s hand splayed over his chest, fingers pressing down lightly. “I can _feel_ it. Christ. It’s hammering.” He sounded faintly awed.

“Oh,” Thor said, unsure how to respond. “Is it – strange?”

Instead of answering Loki pulled him down and kissed him again, savagely this time, all teeth and tongue. His legs came up to wrap around Thor’s waist, pressing them flush against one another, and oh, Thor could hear it himself now: the dull pound of his heart going and going like a clock that had been wound up wrong. _It’s yours,_ he thought, idiotically; _it’s yours, always has been, take it,_ and he gasped helplessly into the kiss as if the air had left him entirely.

Loki’s mouth was at his neck. Thor felt the tell-tale sharpness, the press of teeth, and once again thought he heard that voice, low and urgent. It was somewhere in the back of his head, telling him to stop, to end this _now_ before it was too late, there was still time –

Thor fumbled, pressed his hand against the back of Loki’s head and urged him closer. The bloom of pain intensified, spreading heat. He’d never been good at following directions. Outside, the storm was passing, and birds began to sing.

* * *

“Let us in,” said the vampires outside the window.

Their voices were low and pleading and familiar. Twin shadows against the glass, pale hands intertwined. Paralysed, she lay there in bed, feeling as if cold water was rising inside her chest. Her husband was breathing evenly. His weight beside her was warm, firm, human. Alive. She pushed back the covers and stood on unsteady legs, walking over to the window.

It was strange, really. The empty space where the water was had been there for a year now, ever since her son had told her he planned on staying. Ever since she’d embraced him and known deep down that it was the last time she would do so. He’d said it was because of the house. They’d both known it wasn’t, but she allowed him the luxury of that one lie.

 _He is not coming back._ Ah, but if only that had been true. “Thor, you fool,” she said aloud, and put a hand to her face.

For a second the room was silent. Then Frigga reached out, with a hand that trembled only slightly, and closed the curtains.

The night was absolute. Outside, there was a rustling sound, almost too quiet to be heard; and then even that was gone, leaving behind nothing but darkness and the lingering smell of earth.


End file.
